Today I mostly .....

[Zelandeth]

Well...yesterday.

I mostly drove the Lada up to Center Parcs. Question...how do you make it so that your Lada Riva gets even more baffled looks from other motorists?

Simple...stick a roof rack on and strap a Sinclair C5 onto it!

[Zelandeth]

Sold the Xantia.

Sorry to see the car go, but with the arrival of the Riva the fleet needs to be thinned out. Skoda will probably be the next target.

[Tom.]

Mary no difference between the HT leads on a RHD and LHD 1600 Niva. It will be the location of the coil on a Niva compared to the location of the coli on a Riva. If it was the new old stock leads I gave you then its more than likely they were for a Riva ( not in original packaging ) but the coil lead length will be the only difference. I'll find you one and throw it in next time.

[Zelandeth]

Looks a lovely place. My only experience with France so far has been a trip to the Paris Motor Show a couple of weeks ago, and the most terrifying example of overcrowding on public transport on the tram that I've ever seen...and I used to run the late night city centre weekend buses and the services for special events up north...have never actually had people crowding onto a vehicle with such force that I was crammed against the wall so hard that I literally had the wind knocked out of me.

Needless to say that put me off a return visit slightly and made me appreciate how crowded the Tube in London isn't at rush hour! Know the rest of the country is well different though and look forward to seeing it someday.

Back on the subject of cars, the Lada now has a new matched set of tyres on (despite having fine tread the two on the front were 11 years old and starting to perish), and has had the centre caps put back on the front - will need to put the rear ones back on at the weekend, forgot to take them with me when I had the rear tyres done.

Also picked up some bolts which will allow me to refit the air cleaner properly - all but one of the holes in the top of the carb that it should have studs in have been stripped, so will be dropping bolts through and fastening it that way (with the aid of a bit of thread lock so they don't vibrate loose). The one hole that is blind I'll probably have to drill out and tap to a larger size (assuming I can get to the far side with the top off the carb so I can ensure no swarf gets where it shouldn't). Failing that three bolts is better than one!

Parking brake light has stopped working again so that's gonna need sorting tomorrow too.

[Neil Chowney]

Hi Mary, use 'star' washers as apposed to split spring washers. Use nyloc nuts and use a double nut per stud.

If that fails, weld the transfer box to the underneath of the floor........

[excossack]

Dropped a HP C3000 blade enclosure on my foot. To be fair, it fell out the rack and missed my steel toe cap by 10mm and hit my left big toe right on the joint...needless to say, I said ouch.. Luckily for me it wasn't fully populated.

[Tom.]

Watching VHS videos that were for the dealers eyes only. Training, repairs, right up to sales. Massive thanks to Chris ( former dealer ) who sent me the vids together with a large colour book of a Samara/ ( Already given away for free to a forum member) and a new Lada salesman's tie and pin badge together with other goodies. I've asked and been given permission to edit and make a digital copy of the tapes to give away free to whom I choose.

[Zelandeth]

Loctite was going to be the first thing I'd suggest. Need to pick some up tomorrow for the bolts holding the air cleaner onto the carb on the Riva so they don't vibrate loose again like the originals apparently did, and like they did on my previous Riva, where I found one of them wedged in the carb!

Today I mostly helped a friend repair the remote control for my recently sold Citroen by soldering one of the buttons back onto the PCB, two minute job I just never got around to, then got on with some craft projects in the afternoon. This has mainly consisted of head scratching, cutting out templates, marking fabric up then cutting pieces. Main discovery of the day: Even when it's of decent quality and when you're treating it properly and cutting it properly, faux fur still sheds like nothing on earth when you're cutting and working with it. It seriously looks like a cat exploded on our dining table this afternoon. So far I think I've managed to avoid making any too blindingly obvious, stupid mistakes, though I'm sure I'll find some.

The fluff everywhere situation is not helped by the fact that the dog has just started shedding for his winter coat coming in either mind you!

was going to get the vacuum cleaner out and clean up, but know I've got more to do tomorrow so there is precisely zero point really until then...I'll do it before lunch anyway so I don't end up eating half of it!

[Zelandeth]

Today I mostly...

Set stuff up for reception of any trick or treaters who we may see his evening.

400W blacklight in the front yard illuminating various glow in the dark objects? Check.
Multiple coloured lighting in the atrium? Check.
Fog machine? Check.
Huge ex motorway street light providing amber backlighting for the hedges? Check.
Hammond organ being used as a 160kg iPod dock playing creepy music? Check.
Laserpod on the pool table providing a laser show in the fog? Check.

It's an excuse for me to play with a bunch of my toys really isn't it!

[Zelandeth]

We did have a fair few!

Thursday I spent seven hours crammed into the back of a 2016 VW Golf.

Quite how they have managed to use so much space externally for so little room inside I have no idea...and how they can make a car so catastrophically uncomfortable I have no idea!

Given we had quite a bit of stuff with us, I had seriously considered saying "we need two cars" and jumping in the Riva...wish I had!

Still, weekend is being worth it so far, madness, mayhem and general silliness are ongoing...

[Zelandeth]

Sounds like you're making good progress Mary!

Starting my Riva from cold occasionally requires a bit of swearing at it at the moment as while the auto choke is doing something, it isn't what it *should* be doing.

Had the trip back from Livingston to MK yesterday and can officially say that I never want to see the back seat of that VW again, ever. Next year we're taking my car! Especially given that all being well I will have quite a bit more stuff to take with me by then.

Been a pretty quiet day here really mostly just trying to recover some energy. Got a few things lined up to get done tomorrow though, not least giving the poor Saab a wash as it's more grey than blue at the moment and I need to check when it's due an oil change as I have a sneaking suspicion that it's coming up. Also have a small stack of components waiting to go on the Riva, so will see how the weather co-operates tomorrow.

[Zelandeth]

Finally got around to fettling our heating system, so for the first time since we moved in two and a half years ago, the central heating actually works properly.

Downstairs was always intermittent because of a dodgy contact in the head of the motorised zone control valve, which also had issues with its motor...so often you would need to turn it on and off a few times before it would actually call for heat and start the boiler.

There was a spare head dangling from its power cable which used to be for the solid fuel circuit (decommissioned in 1986...) which after a clean and application of fresh grease to its gears worked perfectly - so rather than buy a replacement, just swapped those over. Last one lasted 32 years, and the one I just fitted is identical...so hopefully will last a while yet.

The room thermostats were also subject to some attention. Upstairs had been thoroughly bodged at some point in the past and had a broken spindle in the dial...plus the detector was in the room we keep the coolest, so kinda useless! Downstairs just suffered from the fact that the thermistor value had crept so far out of range that the temperature scale was useless - and that the hysteresis couldn't be set to anything less than about ten degrees...so two new room stats were duly deployed and wired up. I'll work on making the resulting gaping hole in the front of the control panel pretty again tomorrow. Have got some foamex board floating around from my last project which should do nicely for that.

Definitely do need to do something there though as the poor control panel just looks stupid now with half its innards showing...



Not convinced I won't wind up moving the detector for the downstairs zone as I think the shelves next to it are shielding it and making it slow to respond, but that's not a big issue with it being wireless.

Really do need to get the actual boiler serviced though, if I can actually find a heating engineer who wants the job, which I never thought would be so hard...

[Zelandeth]

Intended to investigate why the heater in my Riva doesn't produce any really meaningful amounts of heat, but never had time to get very far.

There is heat getting as far as the heater hoses, so my money is on the cable to the valve either being maladjusted (or disconnected), or the matrix being full of leaves.

Also really need to get the new tail lights fitted so that I can deal with the fact that water is pouring in around the nearside one at the moment and making the car mist up...which is compounded by the fact that I don't have a heater that gets better than lukewarm!

Also realised that it's nearly a month since I gave the Skoda a run, so really must do that tomorrow.

Instead wasted the best part of three hours trying to figure out why my router had decided to lose interest in providing wireless network access (again). Wound up having to do a factory reset and then set up all the port forwarding and everything from scratch again. Grrr...

Seriously looking forward to the point when I have time to route wired networking throughout the house and can basically ditch the wireless for most things...or at least use a dedicated access point rather than the seriously dodgy implementation in the router. ...Which to be honest I could do now anyway I guess if I actually got my act together. Though if I'm going to go out buying network stuff I figure I may as well just do the whole lot in one and get the switch installed upstairs etc at the same time...

Will be a useful informative exercise anyway with regards to how awkward it actually will be to get cabling or similar between what I tend to refer to as the south/west wings of the house as I'll need to do that with pipework at some point in the next couple of years when we look to get air conditioning installed...My plan there is still to do the vast majority of the installation myself and just get the electrical hookup and commissioning work done by someone with the necessary certification, as given the length of some of the pipework runs, that will save us a pretty penny on labour costs...To be honest, I don't think this place could be more awkwardly shaped to install something like that in if it tried!

[Neil Chowney]

...purchased a very nice set of Bowers and Wilkins P7 headphones.....

[Zelandeth]

Well done Mary!

Nothing much lately as it's been a busy week, but did manage to find an hour yesterday to get the new tail light clusters fitted.

Before:



After:



Much better...